Random links of the hour
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals are unconstitutional. Interestingly, the court decided that even though the military commissions violated the Geneva Conventions and the US Code of Military Justice, they were not illegal per se; what was illegal was the fact that Bush set them up by executive order, without going through Congress. And considering that the Republicans control Congress, unfortunately it looks like Guantanamo Bay will not be closing any time soon.
On a related note, Hannibal of Ars Technica is proposing to compile all the documents about security flaws in (Republican-sponsored) electronic voting machines used in many US states. Hopefully, a concise guide to stealing an election will finally convince the public and state legislatures to buy machines from reputable companies and clear the air of third-world illegitimacy from US elections.
LionKimbro of Slashdot has an interesting opinion on the current level of paranoia in American schools. Why is that whenever anything bad happens (Sept. 11, Columbine shootings, Myspace predators) the American voter’s reaction is “clamp down on civil liberties now, and think about consequences ten years later”?
On a totally unrelated topic, Anant Narayanan has a brief comparison of the major open-source AJAX toolkits. Useful, as I was looking for something like that.
And finally, IBM Devworks has a quick, friendly introduction to Git, Linus Torvald’s new SCM system. Quite useful, considering dearth of beginner’s intro to Git articles.